Desperate attempt to kill the gophers with truck exhaust

Last summer the gophers again invaded our lower garden. Jose set the traps several times, but we just did not catch ANY gopher. They cleverly buried the trap every time. We finally gave up and were VERY lucky they didn't go up to the upper garden as last year and we got the most delicious melons there.

But we also have TREES in the lower garden and more and more mounds appeared. Since we had to run the truck for 20 minutes to do our annual liquid glass leak fix prior to adding antifreeze, we decided to finally try the exhaust kill technique.

I was reading about that last year and I also read that this is ILLEGAL in California. At the last gardening club meeting we discussed various methods to kill gophers, including putting some gum in the holes. I gave that some thought, but it seems like a very cruel way to kill an animal. Many people kill themselves with vehicle exhaust, so it can't be too painful and I decided to try this first:

It so happened that we had an old shop vac and the hose fit perfectly inside out truck exhaust pipe. I made sure I taped it up good with duct tape.

It was VERY convenient that the gophers had decided to dig right outside the lower garden by the driveway. Jose found an open hole about 20 ft away and he could smell the exhaust until he filled the hole, so we are hopeful that they died a peaceful death.

If not, we'll have to resort to gum.

Here's one of the pluots we planted last year:
It looked pretty dead for several months and yesterday it pulled right out of the ground. Looks like the gophers got it.